VOICE – Voices Organized in Civic Engagement – is being honored by the Oklahoma Bar Association with the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Diversity Award during the OBA’s 2015 Diversity Dinner on October 15. The award is given annually by the Bar Association to select individuals and organizations who outwardly demonstrate that “diversity matters in Oklahoma.”

The award is named in honor of Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, who was the first African American woman to attend an all-white law school. In making the selections, the Bar Association’s Diversity Committee honors those in the legal profession and in the community who are making “tremendous strides toward ensuring that ‘We Are What We Ought to Be.’”

“VOICE is very honored to be one of the recipients of the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Diversity Awards,” said the VOICE Education Fund President, Sundra Flansburg. “A foundation of our work is building relationships across many of the lines that tend to divide us in order to improve the accountability of our civic leaders to the people they represent.”

Along with VOICE, five other organizations and people are receiving this honor on Thursday: The Education and Employment Ministry (TEEM); Unheard, the OU alliance of African American students; Judge Jerome Holmes, Attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons; and Attorney Valery Giebel.

VOICE is a coalition of congregations, worker associations, schools, and nonprofit groups that have come together out of a deep sense of mission and concern for families in the Oklahoma City metro area. Member institutions are building relationships across the lines that divide people in our community, in order to stand together to challenge some of the decisions that are made that impact families. VOICE has taken on increasing utility rates and high-stakes testing in the school, and is currently working on a campaign to challenge the fines and fees placed on those who have been incarcerated.  For more information, contact Lead Organizer Kristen King at [email protected] or 405-613-3621.